Shared Blood

Chen Li crouched down and took the piece of metal from Xiao Hongchen's hand, slowly channeling into it the active Soul Power produced by the activation of his Golden Bloodline.

Faced with Chen Li's Gold Attribute Soul Power, the metal neither resisted nor welcomed it. Instead, it slowly and selectively absorbed one portion of his Soul Power while ignoring the rest.

Jing Hongchen had not noticed it before, but now he could sense it clearly. The "elephant" aspect of Chen Li's Martial Soul, inherited from the Diamond Mammoth, was being slowly accepted by the metal, while the "dragon" Soul Power belonging to the White Armored Earth Dragon was being actively rejected.

This was unbelievable—truly unbelievable.

The Dragon Elephant Martial Soul was a fused Martial Soul born from the White Armored Earth Dragon and the Diamond Mammoth, combining the strengths of both.

Perhaps at the very beginning, the Dragon Elephant Martial Soul had only been an accidental mutation, a mutated Martial Soul produced after the already unstable mutated Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul had degenerated.

However, Dragon Blood could fuse with practically anything, and after being passed down through countless generations, this Martial Soul had become extremely stable. There were no signs of it splitting apart.

Several thousand years ago, the Dragon Elephant Martial Soul had appeared in only around one percent of the Dragon Elephant Sect. Only one out of every hundred Soul Masters would possess a Dragon Elephant Martial Soul.

Moreover, the children of Dragon Elephant Martial Soul users had a ninety percent chance of reverting to either a White Armored Earth Dragon or a Diamond Mammoth Martial Soul. Fewer than ten Dragon Elephant Martial Soul users would appear in One Hundred Years.

But after the reproduction of countless generations, that figure had already increased more than tenfold. Dragon Elephant Martial Soul users now made up nineteen percent of the Dragon Elephant Sect.

Furthermore, if either parent possessed a Dragon Elephant Martial Soul, their child had nearly a fifty percent chance of awakening one as well. If both parents possessed Dragon Elephant Martial Souls, that probability rose to ninety percent.

This already counted as a stable inheritance.

As time passed, perhaps another ten thousand years would see the Dragon Elephant Sect reach a point where the Dragon Elephant Martial Soul formed the majority, while the Diamond Mammoth and White Armored Earth Dragon became the minority.

After twenty thousand years, those two Martial Souls might disappear entirely, only occasionally awakening with a probability similar to that of the Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul.

The dragon and elephant aspects within the Dragon Elephant Martial Soul had already fused together stably. At most, different cultivation methods would make one side more pronounced while the other became a supporting aspect, eventually forming a primary and secondary relationship.

With Chen Li's cultivation, the emergence of his Soul Core had long since brought his Soul Power into a perfectly unified state. He was only half a step away from the realm of a Super Douluo, where even one's will was integrated into one's Soul Power.

If a Soul Tool could achieve that level, it would already be considered excellent. If a Soul Beast could select and absorb only a portion of someone's Soul Power, then it would definitely be an Exotic Species with some special ability, or perhaps a type whose ancestors had once been formidable.

But for a piece of metal to be so selective, and to precisely separate mixed Soul Power into the portions it needed and those it did not...

To Soul Masters, this was no longer merely surprising. It was terrifying.

"Is this thing alive?" Jing Hongchen sensed the metal, yet found nothing.

Although the elemental power within had become more active after absorbing Chen Li's Soul Power, the metal was unquestionably an inanimate object without life.

Chen Ming took several steps back and watched Chen Li hold the metal as though sensing something. He could not quite understand why he had been additionally rejected after using Martial Soul Possession, until he carefully recalled the greatest difference between the Dragon Elephant and Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Souls.

The Dragon Elephant Martial Soul was elephant-based with Dragon Blood added to it. The elephant aspect still made up the greater part.

The Vajra Dragon Elephant Martial Soul, however, was a perfect half-and-half combination of dragon and elephant. Because of the special nature of Dragon Blood, after Martial Soul Possession, its dragon aspect manifested more strongly than its elephant aspect.

Although his First Soul Ring had absorbed the Golden Soul Beast Diamond Mammoth, its age had been too low. The Golden Bloodline within him had not become active because of it, and the two sides remained balanced.

The origin of this metal was probably something left behind by the bloodline source of the Diamond Mammoth. It should have belonged to some super Soul Beast that had either gone extinct in the current era or did not exist on either the Sun Moon Continent or the Douluo Continent.

Furthermore, this Soul Beast might have possessed the ability to suppress the Dragon Clan.

The elephant aspect within him was already impure and insufficient in quantity. It had barely been possible for him to gain acceptance in the first place, and now that he had undergone Dragon Transformation, of course he was being rejected.

Yet Chen Ming did not step forward as he watched Chen Li seemingly sense something. He merely maintained Martial Soul Possession, closed his eyes, endured the instinctive reaction, and attempted to sense something under the pressure.

Time passed bit by bit. Around five minutes later, one of the two people standing rigidly in place finally moved. However, it was not Chen Li, who had entered something like deep meditation, but Chen Ming, whose face was already drenched in sweat.

With a try-it-and-see mindset, Chen Ming carefully removed the corpse of the Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bear, whose two claws had been removed, from his Soul Tool.

Storage Soul Tools on the Douluo Continent were very special. Aside from the size of the space itself, the greatest issue determining whether they could store living creatures was not whether the internal space was stable enough, but whether there was air inside.

Yes, as absurd as it sounded, that was the biggest difference between Storage Soul Tools that could hold living creatures and those that could not.

Things like preservation, simulated gravity, and simulated sunlight were merely special additions intended to make living creatures more comfortable or serve certain purposes.

Having them made the experience better, but lacking them did not affect whether a Soul Tool itself could store living creatures.

Chen Ming's Vajra Belt was a low-grade one. Its internal space was fairly large, but it contained no air.

Items stored inside would not remain forever unchanged as though time had stopped, but with most bacteria unable to reproduce, they became exceptionally well-preserved.

Combined with the unusual environment within and the protection of its formidable cultivation while alive, the ten-thousand-year Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bear's corpse that Chen Ming took out still carried a trace of vitality, despite having been dead for several months.

If the places where its claws had been cut off had not been treated to stop the bleeding, the Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bear's blood might still have dripped from its wounds.

Under the puzzled gazes of Jing Hongchen and the other two, Chen Ming inserted his Dragon Transformation-covered hand into a wound on the Dark Gold Dreadclaw Bear's body and slowly smeared its blood over himself.